Kingdoms Fall - The Laxenburg Message (11 page)

“That’s a nest of hornets, and no mistake.”
said Hart.

“Yes, and let’s hope the Norfolks don’t stir
them up too much before we retire. I fear that Beauchamp will take the men too
close to the road and walk right into those guns. I need you to keep Beauchamp
up in the woods so our line of retreat remains open. I think I can make it to
the cemetery alright from here. Go find the Colonel and stay with him until I
come find you.”

Sergeant Hart found Colonel Beauchamp in the
midst of the action, wet with sweat and very red in the face – he looked to be
on the edge of collapse.

“Colonel, Sir, Captain Gresham wishes me to
report that the village is close by to the south. He reports, Sir, that the
Turks in the village are heavily entrenched and well-armed.”

“I appreciate the information, Sergeant. We
will hold the hillside here, have no doubt. The Turks have been sending sorties
up to sweep through our lines, but we have no intention of entering the
village. The Fourth Battalion will be coming up for that in just a few hours.
Our task is to protect their left flank and dispose of these sorties as they
emerge.”

“Aye, Sir,” said Hart. He was hesitant to say
more about Gresham’s whereabouts, but he kept close to the Colonel. Night had
fallen fast and the smoke was beginning to dissipate. Finding a path through
the partly wooded and partly burnt hillside to meet Gresham would be no easy
task. Even as the Turkish snipers on the hillside continued to withdraw towards
the town, sorties were still sent out to determine the Norfolks’ position and
test their line. Platoon after platoon of light infantry pushed relentlessly
against the Fifth Norfolks, reducing their numbers and forcing the Battalion
down from the hills, and, eventually, into the road directly in front of
Anafarta Sagir.

Gresham quickly stripped off his jacket and stuffed
it in his rucksack. He decided to leave his rifle on the hill and continued on
as quietly and quickly as he could. The Turkish snipers had cleared out,
however, and Gresham had only to hide quietly from the two small Turkish
patrols he came across.

A couple hundred yards further east, Gresham
spotted the cemetery again. As he suspected, the Turks saw no need to guard the
dead and no one wanted to camp anywhere near the stinking trenches and piles of
corpses. Behind the cemetery was the small run-in shed where, in better days, a
horse or mule might have been kept. Gresham circled around to the north of the
cemetery and approached the small shed slowly and quietly, his service revolver
drawn. He stood at last beside the shed itself and listened, wondering not for
the last time if he had been right to trust Mackenzie.

“
Salam alaykum
,” said Gresham in as calm
and normal a tone of voice as he could muster.

A tall, clean, well-groomed and smartly-dressed
enemy officer stepped warily out of the shadow of the shed and held up his
empty hands.

“
Wa alaykum e-salam
, Englishman,” said
the Arab officer.

“You speak English?”

“Yes, a little. I am Muhammed al-Faruqi. What
is your name, please?”

“Woodrow Wilson.”

“That is correct. Our friend gave me that name
for you, very clever. You are not to shoot, please.”

“No, I’m not going to shoot you,” said Gresham,
lowering his revolver. “But we need to be off quickly before someone else
does.”

“Yes. Begin then.”

“Follow me and stay close.”

Gresham retraced his steps as best he could up
to the hillside and took a slightly higher path well out of sight of the
village below. There was a lot of shooting by the heavily entrenched troops
before the village, but higher up it appeared the hills were clear. There were
Turkish and British bodies spread across the hillside.

“Where were you stationed tonight?” Gresham
asked.

“Here, there,” said the officer, pointing to
the village, “I go where I choose.”

“Where you choose?” Gresham remarked in
surprise. “What is your rank?”

“I am what you would call a ‘Major’ in your
British infantry.”

“Do you have identification, papers?”

“Yes, of course I have papers.”

Gresham was kneeling on the ground, examining a
dead Turkish soldier whose face had been badly wounded; he began tearing off
the man’s jacket. “Let me have them, please, and your jacket, hat and boots. We
need to leave your remains behind.”

“Yes, I understand.” The officer stripped off
his jacket and hat and threw them to Gresham, who had the dead man sitting up
to place the officer’s jacket on him. The Major sat and Gresham helped to pull
off his tall, well-polished and expensive black leather boots. They quickly
finished switching clothes and papers with the dead man. Then, to make sure
there could be no alternative identification, Gresham thoroughly smashed the
dead man’s face with the heel of his boot. It was past midnight when he and
al-Faruqi returned to where Gresham had left the Fifth Norfolks.

The Norfolks were gone.

Then Gresham realized that Sergeant Hart had disappeared
with them. He felt a knot in his stomach and swallowed hard. He wanted to find
Hart, who was the only man at Suvla Bay who seemed to know what he was doing.
Gresham hesitated.

“We must go,” said al-Faruqi.

“I told them not to go near the village.”

“If that is where your men have gone, then they
will not survive. There is a young Lieutenant Colonel commanding our Nineteenth
Division in that village. Mustafa Kemal is a very ambitious man and a ruthless
commander. Your men will not take the village, and he does not take prisoners.”

Gresham knew he could not leave the Major alone
to go find Hart. They had gotten to the point where Gresham was more concerned
about al-Faruqi being shot by the British than by the Turks. And if any man
could take care of himself, he thought, it would be Sergeant Hart. Hopefully
Hart knew enough to get the Hell out of the battle in front of the village.

Gresham clenched his fists, turned towards the
bay and led al-Faruqi west.

They finally reached the end of the hills where
the land flattened out and the wide open plains began. A couple miles easy
march would take them to the British trenches. Behind them, the battle was
being fought on the road leading into the village and Gresham felt sick, as he
knew the Norfolks and Sergeant Hart were probably in that battle, perhaps even
the cause of it. To the north, the Hants and Suffolks were fighting bitterly up
onto the ridges around Kidney Hill, and another battle was raging on Scimitar
Hill to the south.

“This would be a good time to put on my uniform
jacket,” said Gresham, holding his blood stained and dusty jacket out to the
Arab Major. “We’re more likely to run into British soldiers than Turks from
here on out.”  Al-Faruqi silently put on Gresham’s jacket, and the two men
began a cautious hike across the plain. The pace of the gunfire behind them
quickened, and Gresham began to worry that the Turks had broken out and were
following them. Ahead, however, Gresham could suddenly see hundreds of fresh
British troops with field artillery marching across the plain in their
direction.

Gresham stopped and had al-Faruqi lie down. As
the British troops approached, he hailed them. None stopped. Like a wave, the
fresh battalion marched past Gresham and on towards the village. Some moved to
the right and left, fanning out to push up the ridge in both directions to
flank the village. Soon the battle behind them truly erupted into a firestorm
of bullets, mortars and machine guns. A Colonel on a large black stallion
suddenly emerged from the darkness and pulled up directly in front of Gresham
and al-Faruqi.

“Who are you men; what battalion?”

“Aye, gov’ner, I’m with the Fifth Norfolks,
Sir,” said Gresham in the best Norfolk parlance he could manage. “The Captain
here, he’s a Royal Gurkha as you can plainly see from his skin, attached to my
Company, and he’s injured severely, Sir, and he looked to be bleedin’ out so
Colonel Beauchamp said I should take him back as fast as I can, but by the
looks of ‘im, I don’t think he’ll make it. I been carrying him the last mile or
so, Sir.”

“Where is Colonel Beauchamp?”

“I’m sorry to say the Fifth is in front of the
village, Sir. Mighty hot up ahead, Sir, mighty hot: Machine guns, mortars, snipers,
old Abdul in the trenches, and a lot of wire. The works, if you see my meaning,
Sir. Perhaps you’d like me to take your fine horse to the rear, Sir, as I don’t
think he’ll survive long up ahead? Makes a mighty big target with you on him,
don’t you think, Sir?”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right. What’s your name?”
The Colonel dismounted quickly, although from fear or embarrassment was
difficult to say.

“Corporal Pelt, Sir, Arthur Pelt, C Company.”

“Very well, Corporal. Walk my horse back to the
stables at Hill 10. The Gurkha Captain may ride.”

“Thank you, Sir. I have every certainty that
you have just saved this man’s life, Sir.”

Gresham helped the “wounded” al-Faruqi onto the
horse’s saddle. As the Fourth Norfolks rushed forward against the small village
ahead, Gresham slowly led the horse and al-Faruqi towards the rear.

The Tenth Manchesters had finally begun their
advance shortly after midnight. Wilkins and his company were on the hill
leading back up to the Kiretch Tepe ridge. Ahead of the company, the artillery
shells from the British destroyers were crashing all along the top of the
ridge, creating a curtain of cinders, smoke, dust and iron. There was no sign
of any living thing ahead but for the crackle of sniper and machine gun fire.
The star shells and Verey flares could not cut through the dust and smoke, but
the sky was filled with pockets of luminescence that lit the hills dimly. It
was impossible to see if the shells had destroyed the barbed wire in front of
the Turkish trenches. Colonel Banks had ordered Wilkins to advance straight
through the British bombardment and to attack the Turkish machine gunners on
the right. Time after time, Wilkins sent runners forward to locate the machine
gun emplacements, but none of his men had returned. He shouted ahead to a deep
shell hole in which several men sought cover. One man poked his head up to look
and was instantly struck by a bullet. A second head came up, and a bullet
struck off the man’s pith helmet. He was bleeding heavily, but was not badly
wounded. He became deliriously excited about his wound and called for stretcher-bearers
to take him to the rear. When no stretcher arrived, he crawled from the hole in
frustration and began running back. A bullet struck his leg, and he fell.

This battle was much different from the one
Wilkins had fought with Gresham a few days before. This was brutal murder, and
the cost of life was staggering:  Wilkins had already seen many of his men
die. He was no longer afraid for his own safety, as his expectation of survival
was altogether gone. Now he just wanted to kill as many of the Turks as he
possibly could.

Wilkins scrambled forwards to the shell hole
and slid down below the rim. The hole was full of wounded men and dead men and
parts of men. His whole company had gone to ground; the men were crouching in
whatever shell holes could be found nearby. Suddenly with a roar the whole sky
and every hill and tree were illuminated bright red – one of the British
artillery shells had hit an ammunition cache. Wilkins could see a few men,
including Sergeant Major Dunham, in shell holes around his own. By shouting,
the order to advance was transmitted hole to hole. At last, Wilkins raised his
whistle to his mouth and blew. More than a hundred men rose out of their pits
and scrambled forward on their bellies. Wilkins and the first wave of troops
reached the first, narrow trench only to find that the Turkish troops there had
already been obliterated by the British shelling. Wilkins and his men slid into
the first trench, seeking cover from the hail of shrapnel and machine gun fire
overhead, gasping through the smoke and heat.

Only ten yards ahead, but on the other side of
a thick barbed wire barricade, the second Turkish trench was heavily defended.
Wilkins thought his company might be able to crawl under the wires, which he
was angry to see the British shells had left untouched. He called to his men to
prepare for the advance, and then raised his whistle to his lips again. He
tried to wait for the flares to burn out, but there was no let up. The whistle
blew, and the company scrambled up out of the trench. The Turkish machine guns
were waiting, and dozens of men fell instantly. Some advanced to the wire.
There was no way through. His men were being picked off one by one, so Wilkins
ordered the men back into the narrow trench behind them. As he slipped back
into the trench, he felt a sudden burning sensation across his left cheek and
his left ear suddenly felt wet. Less than twenty men had made it back into the
trench.

Wilkins soon realized that a bullet had scored his
cheek to the bone and gone through his left ear. He was bathed in blood. He
ordered his men to save their ammunition and to hold the trench against a
counter-attack. He tore off part of his shirt and pressed it tightly against
his cheek and ear to staunch the flow of blood, but he felt terribly
light-headed and nauseous and his heart was beating wildly in his chest. He
fell unconscious to the bottom of the trench.